Oui Capital’s Olu Oyinsan on what African VC keeps getting wrong

In January 2025, Oui Capital, an Africa-focused venture capital firm, told its investors that it had returned its $4 million debut fund in full, putting it among the small group of African fund managers to have returned capital to investors during the current cycle.

Oui Capital achieved this feat largely through a $150,000 investment in Moniepoint in 2019. When the Nigerian fintech crossed a $1 billion valuation five years later, Oui Capital’s stake was worth roughly $8 million, generating a 53x return on a single investment and one of the most-cited outcomes in African venture capital. 

It is the kind of result that can define a firm. But according to Olu Oyinsan, Oui Capital’s general partner, it is not the reason the first fund worked.

Even without Moniepoint, Fund I would have returned twice the fund’s size, according to Oyinsan. With Moniepoint included, the fund returns stand at 4x. That distinction matters because a large exit can sometimes obscure an otherwise average portfolio. 

The first fund also had a second exit from AMOpportunities, a US healthcare company acquired by a private equity group. Oui Capital led pre-seed rounds in Duplo, Bento, MarketForce in Kenya, and Akiba Digital in South Africa. Those companies remain in the portfolio and are still performing well, Oyinsan told TechCabal.

Founded in 2018 by Oyinsan and Francesco Andreoli, Oui Capital backs pre-seed and seed-stage technology companies across Africa, primarily in digital commerce, enterprise software, fintech, and human capital. 

The founders studied the market before developing the firm’s investment thesis and looking for companies to fit it. With Moniepoint, they bet that offline payments were being held back by high transaction-failure rates and that the company’s founders had the operational experience…